Episode 226: Conversations Worth Having – with Jackie Stavros and Jon Berghoff

[INTRODUCTION]

 

Jon: Hey, Miracle Morning Community. It’s been a little while. It’s me, Jon. I’m back and I’m here with my dear friend, mentor, and colleague, Dr. Jackie Stavros. Today’s going to be a real treat because this is going to be a conversation worth having which is also the name of the book that Dr. Jackie Stavros here just published. It was an instant timeless, international, intergalactic bestseller at least in my opinion. So, Jackie, I’m really glad to be here with you.

 

Hey, here’s what I love to do, I would like to take a second, Jackie, and just tell everyone a little bit about how I met you, how I was introduced to you, and then I want our audience, the Miracle Morning Community, the Achieve Your Goals Community to learn a little bit about your background and the wisdom that you have delivered to the world in this book here, Conversations Worth Having. And I know that there are so many of you who are listening or watching who are readers, lifelong learners, and I am not afraid to tell you that this might be one of the more important books that applies in more places than many of the other books you might read. There are so many opportunities for us when we talk about conversations in our lives.

 

So, first thing, Jackie, I want to share to everybody a little bit how I was introduced to you. So, many in our community who got to know me last year when I was co-hosting for Hal heard me talk about at different times the work that I do through our company, Flourishing Leadership Institute. What a lot of people don’t know is that when we started our company, I knew that I needed a lot of help and so I went to one of my mentors, one of my advisors, Dr. David Cooperrider, and I asked David Cooperrider and I said, “David, I need help. Who can you refer me to who could help me out?” And he gave me three names and, Jackie, I’m pretty sure your name was the very first and he said, “You need to talk to Dr. Jackie Stavros because Jackie is a pioneer in the methodology that I use and the work that I do,” and I’m sure we’ll end up talking about that today because, Jackie, you’ve been at this for longer than I have.

 

And, Jackie, you’ve become like a close mentor. You’ve become a dear friend and you’ve become somebody who I’ve had the privilege to work with going into different environments, helping on a really large scale companies to change the conversations that they’re having and what I’m super pumped about is that your book that you just published, Conversations Worth Having, is all about taking these lessons that we’ve learned through this large-scale work and applying it on one-on-one conversations. There’s so much here to learn and I’m just super pumped that you took the time to be with us today, Jackie. So, you ready to rock and roll? Can I just ask you some questions? Does that sound good?

 

[INTERVIEW]

 

Jackie: Absolutely. All right.

 

Jon: So, Jackie, first things first, for our audience, if they’re not familiar with Appreciative Inquiry, I’m going to like break a rule here and I’m going to tell them go back and listen to Episode 152 where Hal interviewed me and I talked about the four questions that’ll change your life and really that whole conversation from Episode 152 was like a crash course in this methodology that Jackie and I use in our work called Appreciative Inquiry. Jackie, what I would love is for you to share with us a little bit about your story and your history as it relates to Appreciative Inquiry because you’ve been at this for almost 20 years and you’ve actually pioneered. You’ve created some approaches to large group planning that had been used all around the world but tell us about your journey with this method. I’d love to hear that.

 

Jackie: So, I came from the automotive high-tech industry marketing branding development and I worked for CEO that would say, they would start a meeting about what I can’t do, what’s wrong, what’s wrong with the product, the failure rates around yesterday. The disdain for shareholders is pretty negative and that was also in my MBA years and so I was overseas thinking about the human side of the business. There’s got to be something more that once you’re out in organizational life, what is possible, what could be. So, I looked at a program at Case Western Reserve. It was called a Doctorate of Management and it was very different than a traditional doctorate where you’re a graduate research assistant and I came upon the names of David Cooperrider, Ron Fry, Suresh Srivastva, and Richard Boyatzis and stuff on emotional intelligence, appreciative inquiry and it was very intriguing.

 

So, off to Case I went in 1995. I met David Cooperrider and he was teaching a class called Appreciate Ways of Knowing. There was no 4-D cycle about how to do AI. It was not part of the business world yet. It was simply a way to ask questions that were non-neutral. And that’s how I got involved from being David’s doctorate student and literally falling in love with Appreciative Inquiry, what it was, its principles, and what it could be. And I left the private industry where I was working and started to work on my dissertation and my research full-time with David in 1998 and haven’t stopped researching, working, thinking, being, doing Appreciative Inquiry and everything that I do from raising kids to working with people.

 

Jon: Yeah. That’s awesome. So, you were a part of really early on this I call it a movement and it’s interesting because it’s like a movement whose time has finally come.

 

Jackie: Now, yes.

 

Jon: Yeah. And that’s amazing to think about what you’ve been a part of and I have a deeper appreciation because this method called Appreciative Inquiry is what I do every day. I know someone who’s listening for the first time might think, “Well, this sounds intriguing. I would love to hear more about it.” And maybe what would be a cool way, Jackie, for people to hear more about it is let’s talk about your book that you just published because the work that you’ve done for a really long time from the outside looking in even just hearing about your background is about helping large groups to come together to solve a problem to create a plan whether it’s the army or an educational institution or you just got back from Thailand teaching there but your book is all about how to bring the lessons that you’ve learned working with these large groups back into our everyday conversations. So, maybe an interesting starting point even though for some of us this is an unnecessary question, but I think it’s still worth starting by asking, what is the value of a conversation? Why our conversation is so important? Why is it important for us to care deeply about every conversation that we have?

 

Jackie: So, let me start with a short exercise for listeners and for yourself but if you go back to that first conversation that got me interested in Appreciative Inquiry, if you were to close your eyes and think of a conversation that was negative and blaming in what you did wrong and you just go back to that moment and if I ask you to open your eyes and all I ask is, “How do you feel?” I’m not even going to ask you to tell me about that horrible conversation but already it hurts right between my heart, right here, and that’s what a negative destructive critical conversation can do. So, if you took three deep breaths and you close your eyes again and you thought about a conversation that you appreciated someone, you valued something, it was exciting, it was fun, it was a way forward, it was about what was going on right, and you were thriving or you saw a conversation with your children or a worker, and you take a deep breath and you open your eyes I would ask you to think about not only how you felt but to talk about that conversation. That’s how important conversations are and that’s what the book is all about is to have more of those conversations worth having for thriving, flourishing, well-being, and what is possible.

 

Jon: I’m grateful that you ask us to think about how we feel from different conversations because it’s interesting. It’s almost easier to remember how they made us feel than it is the conversation themselves and one of the things that you write in your book and kind of advocating for the importance of conversations is simply the idea that the conversation is the relationship. If you look at any relationship and you try and kind of like deconstruct it down to what, how can you actually witness that relationship? So much of it is visible just by looking at or witnessing our conversations. So, when you think about what’s a good starting point, so if someone’s listening right now and they’re thinking, “Well, I have conversations with people all day long,” what’s a good starting point to help somebody to maybe improve or evolve their conversations to take a different approach towards their conversations or maybe something you could share with us to get us to think a little bit differently about the next conversations we have?

 

Jackie: Well, I would tell you now that you’ve heard about a little bit about what is Appreciative Inquiry if you went back to that Clip 152. So, now that you’re aware that there’s a way of being, a way of thinking, a way of doing called Appreciative Inquiry, you could be in any type of conversation. It could be a conversation in your mind, it could be critical, it could be superficial, or it could be destructive. And so, the question is what are just two practices that you could use to start reframing through positive reframing that conversation? And Cheri Torres, my co-author and I, the whole writing of the book was a conversation to get this right. So, the two practices of positive reframing, what is it you want more off, what are you looking for, and asking a generative question and a generative question allows for your voices to be heard, a generative question deepens and you’re really good at this, Jon, deepens understanding of a situation. A generative question would increase possibilities, productivity, and you make room for diverse and different perspectives, new information and knowledge. So, those two practices, a positive framing and generative questions, if you can get that, you’re on your way to having conversations worth having no matter how good or how bad the situation is.

 

Jon: So, let’s pick these apart and maybe start with the first one and I’m so grateful that your inclination is just to immediately make this practical and just like a caution for everybody, both of these practices like this first one here of reframing a conversation positively, I have witnessed this method or this approach creating incredible transformations for people instantly as soon as they get this one idea. So, I love starting here. So, Jackie, tell us more about the concept of positive reframing. What is it? How do we do it? What would that look like?

 

Jackie: I’ll give you two examples. The one example is you have a worker or somebody says, “I don’t want to do this, and I don’t like this.” You just have to pause and ask them, “Well, what do you want more off? What would you like to see?” We use this, and this is in your TED talk, the X and the O. I’m a professor, I grade papers. Fifteen years ago, you put Xs, right? You grade papers in red. When I learned about Appreciative Inquiry, I began to most of my papers I ask my students to grade it in purple or blue ink. And there are circles and they’re what I need them to do more of and what I’m looking for more of in their paper versus everything they’re doing wrong. And so, I think that’s one of my favorite examples is our inclination, I used to be a lifeguard who would say, “Don’t run on the deck,” and the brain hears run on the deck. The kids run on the deck and they fall down, and you’ve got to pause and say, “What actions do I want from the kids when you’re swimming or at a pool deck? It’s summertime Walk on the deck.” The actions you want, what you want more of, and that’s what positive framing is, is what do you want them to do.

 

Jon: Yeah. This is one of these lessons that I see playing out. If obviously, it’s embedded in the work that you and I both do, Jackie, and I see it play out everywhere I go especially in my personal life as a parent. It’s so easy to see something in our home or with our kids and immediately, I feel like, “Well, I have to sit here and say don’t do this or don’t do that,” but I’ve learned the hard way that I can sit there and I can scream at my kids, “Don’t do this,” but I rarely get the outcome that I want because I fail to realize that saying, “Well, don’t do this,” doesn’t necessarily tell them do more of this. In a business setting, I first learned this and I’m going to tell the story quickly of the British Airways example of this and I read about this in a textbook that you had written that’s used in universities around the world and it was such an aha moment for me when I first heard this story and I’m sure our listeners maybe have heard me tell this a time or two before but it was simply a time where a group of consultants went into British Airways and they asked him, “What do you want to work on?”

 

And for many of our listeners, you can think about any area of your lives, your businesses, your lives personally, professionally, and you could think what’s something I want to work on and you might have answers that come up that immediately feel justifiable. It feels logical. “Well, I need to lose weight. I need to make more money. I need to have better relationships,” and that’s fair. These all might be important areas to work on. Well, when these consultants using this method that Jackie and her colleagues have pioneered for the last few decades, these consultants get right so they said, “We want to fix our lost baggage problem.” Well, this idea that Jackie is sharing with us right now about how do you reframe a conversation, this was – it was kind of a classical case study that we often share in this world where we use this Appreciative Inquiry method. The British Airways consultants they realized, “If we come together and we just ask ourselves how do we fix our lost baggage problem, all we’re going to do is what we would call close the deficit gap.” In other words, close the gap between broken and fixed. And, Jackie, I’ve learned this from you that when we sit here and ask ourselves how do I lose weight, how do I improve my business, how do I improve my family, if we’re not careful, we might not realize it but we’re often just doing very little more than fixing a problem, if even that.

 

And so, the British Airways, the team they realized, “We need to rethink the question that we’re asking,” and so they came back, and they said, “Okay. We understand what it means to flip the conversation. What we’re going to do is we’re not going to spend the next couple of days or couple of months asking how do we fix our lost baggage problem. We’re going to ask a different question. We’re going to ask a question of how do we create an exceptional arrival experience.” And not only did they end up solving some of their lost baggage problems, but they actually came up with ideas and innovations that went way beyond that and created a lot of positive outcomes for them. And so, I would just encourage all of you to think about this, how can you make sure that in any area of your lives you catch yourself in your internal conversations and then with others, flipping the conversation towards what is it that we really want? In fact, Jackie, I was telling you earlier, I just had this last week. I was coaching somebody in our LEAF community where we train this stuff and they said to me, they said, “Jon, I want to figure out how to help my team that I lead, a small team of six or seven people.” In fact, they didn’t even lead the team. They don’t have title or authority which makes it even more important to know how to facilitate great conversations because you can’t mandate the people to do something. You have to actually influence with skills.

 

And so, this person asked me for coaching and they said, “I’m trying to figure out how to get our team to be more compliant, to behave better, to be more accountable.” And I asked this woman, I said, “Well, okay. So, tell me what you want.” She said, “Well, I want to be more compliant.” I said, “Well, why is that?” She goes, “Because we really need to be accountable to what we said we’re going to do.” And then I asked her a question. I said, “Let me ask you something. If your team walks into the room and you announced that, ‘We’re going to have a conversation and we’re going to talk about how to become more compliant,’ are they going to be excited about that or are they going to be depressed?” And she was like, “I get it. No, they’re not happy to talk about that.”

 

I said, “So, let me ask you again. What is it that all of you on your team actually want? Like give me an answer that’s what you ultimately would love to move towards,” and she had to do a little like mental jujitsu to figure out in her head like, “Oh, wait a minute. We want to be more compliant, we want to be more accountable, but what Jon’s asking is what do we ultimately want?” And so, immediately she gets it. She goes, “Well, what we want is superior customer service,” and I said, “Okay. Now you’ve accomplished step one which is you’ve reframed positively the whole conversation so when your team walks into the room you say, ‘Team, we’re going to talk about how might we create exceptional or superior customer service.’” And now how to do that, you now need to know what to do next but the whole point is everyone’s going to be more energized and more excited to get to superior customer service than to get to more compliance and more accountability.

 

So, I just want to share that personal example that since I’ve learned this from you, Jackie, I’ve seen this play out in a lot of different ways. Is there anything that you want to add to this idea of positive reframing or do you want to tell us a little bit more about the concept of asking a generative question which what is that, what does that mean, and where do we use it?

 

Jackie: Yeah. I just want to kudos to you mentioning that because sometimes people will think AI, you’re ignoring the problem, and it’s – you’re not ignoring the problem. You’re seeing beyond the problem, baggage loss to an exceptional arrival experience and creating solutions and possibilities where the problems seem to go, they do go away because you’re onto exceptional. So, I think that’s really important and it takes practice to do this. It’s not natural to do this and we talk about this in the book. So, generative question, we thought really hard. We have positive framing and generative questions and well, maybe it’s positive questions and Cheri and I went back and forth, and we said but the generative question is really it’s a type of question that I could say, “Tell me about great ways of communication or the best ways to communicate,” and that’s positive and it’s generative and I can also say, “So, tell me how do you want to see us communicate more around here?” That’s generative. It doesn’t have that positive spin.

 

So, we were very intentional that when we look up generativity, there were three things that our good old dictionary said is generativity makes room for diverse and different perspectives so it’s not just what Jackie and Jon think. It’s what Jackie, Jon and Laura and Scott think and then it surfaces new information and knowledge from people who typically aren’t in the conversations. It’s how do you bring all the relevant voices into the room. And the best thing is because of the positive framing, it stimulates creativity and innovation and one of your favorite questions, I like the way you always explained design when we get to the design, the third D, is how might we? What might be? And that just opens people up.

 

Jon: Yeah. And this idea of generative questions, again I said this earlier, three of my four or five favorite generative questions I do like a 60, 70-minute deep dive in Episode 152 of the Achieve Your Goals podcast but really those questions are, when have I been at my best? When am I at my best? What could my best look like? Or even preceding all those going back to why does this even matter to me? Every one of these are just examples of, Jackie, what you call a generative question which is just being thoughtful around what these questions are going to elicit or dry out from us, and remembering that we have freedom of choice even in the questions that we ask.

 

In fact, one of my favorite questions to ask myself this sounds almost like it could be exhausting but it’s sexually liberating is what’s the best question for me to ask right now? What’s the best question for me to be asking myself? And, Jackie, I want to go back to something you said because you said this just really quickly, but you pointed out something. I’ve noticed that when I go home at the end of the day to my wife and my three kids that no matter how much I understand all this stuff intellectually it is still more often than not difficult, sometimes very difficult to tilt the conversations towards the positive and you said something that it’s not natural. Is that true? Is that true that like do we have a bias towards seeing what’s wrong or what’s broken? What are your thoughts on that?

 

Jackie: Yeah. So, one of the things we didn’t have planned in the book and it ended up being chapter 6 in the book, it ended up being it’s not magic, it’s science. There are those that view when you experience Appreciative Inquiry, it is magical. I spoke to a woman. I didn’t know her name. I can tell you her first name was Carmen and after she learned, she read the book, she told me she was a recovering alcoholic and she had been dry for five years now. And she said at first when she tried the positive reframing and the generative questions, her teenagers kind of thought she was strange. They weren’t sure what was going on, but she just kept practicing this and saying, “I want to have a conversation with you,” and in the book we list some questions, but she said, “I just want to understand more what you’re looking for or how I can help you or what is it you need from me, so I can let you be independent.”

 

And she said she is now having conversations with her teenagers and she just gave me a big hug and said, “It works but it’s not,” she says, “It’s not natural,” because something over society, if you have any furry animals, dogs and cats, they’re always happy but a lot of it has to do with how the owner treats them and you think of your own children, how happy babies are until about they call it terrible twos. Well, that’s because you’re putting them into the terrible. So, society begins to condition them that this is what they’re going to be like and so you have to, I always say, like you said deconstruct. It works. It really does work and the science behind it, think of how we started our conversation when I had to go dark and deep and negative, think of how your body began to feel about that. So, there is the empirical science for the people who are skeptical, but you have to practice this, and you got to get good at this.

 

Jon: Yeah. Well, it’s probably a lot easier for us to talk about than it is to just master this stuff. Jackie, is there anything else? Is there anything else which I don’t know if that qualifies as a generative question or not but is there anything else that you share in the book or that you’ve learned in the work that you’ve done that could help us in having conversations worth having? Love to know any final thoughts you might want to share with us. It’d be great.

 

Jackie: So, two things and I would say the first thing is that it goes back to your team exercise and what people want to talk about is you have that employee who’s always late for work, who’s always late for work, and you’re going to have a talk and we have an exercise. The employee who’s always late for work. Well, you know the way you’re going to set that up, if you haven’t heard of Appreciative Inquiry it’s going to be a critical and a tough conversation but if you set up a conversation of what are you looking for, what does the team need more of, you will address the problem of the late person and we learned in this story was it was the time of the meeting at 8 AM on Wednesday morning. “Come on, folks, there’s 39 other hours in the week and five other days that we could try to have this meeting to help out Melissa.” And so, we have that story in there in a business setting.

 

And then I want you guys to know we talk about this in the book. You’re going to have the innate awful moments and that’s just human and the story we talk about at the end of the book was my daughter, Allie, wrote a story that we put in the book about when my husband was diagnosed with a stage 4 cancer. Having a conversation in my head, driving home from the hospital five years ago and thinking, “How do you tell your 10 and 12-year-old your father has stage 4 cancer but there’s a 50-50 chance?” And so, by the time I got home from the hospital to tell my kids that, the first question that came out of the 12-year-old Allie’s mouth was, “Is dad going to die?” The answer I wanted to say was, “No, he’s going to be okay, Allie.” The answer I gave her was a pause and I said, “You know what, Allie, we’re all going to die,” and she didn’t like that answer and I said, “Let’s talk about how we move forward, how we have to heal, how we learn to live with cancer, how do we beat this,” and she said, “This conversation stinks, mom.” I said, “I know but it’s one we have to have because we have to move forward,” and it’s with through the generative questions that my kids and I were able to get through nine months of chemo and what it does to you.

 

And this one part is not in the book and this is how I know it works. So, you have relapses when you’re in and out when you’re dealing with cancer and I remember bringing Paul home from the hospital and he had a relapse and I said, “You guys, I got to get dad back to the hospital,” and they were like, “You go, mom. We’re comfortable. We want you with dad.” And I heard Adam who is 10 said, “Allie, is dad going to die?” She said, “Adam, we’re all going to die.” She said, “So, back to eating lasagna,” that’s because all the neighbors are bringing lasagna by. So, the 12 and a10-year-old they model what you do. They will kind of mock what you do but they also model what you do as parents and so will your employees over time.

 

Jon: Wow. Jackie, that’s a beautiful story and a great reminder for all of us. I’m going to read an excerpt from the book here and then ask you to share actually another story with us. And this excerpt comes from the introduction to the book and the introduction was written by David Cooperrider and this is just one quote from an incredible introduction and he writes this. He says, “When you approach each vital conversation as if it could become the most important conversation you might ever have, you can create a positive legacy,” and then he presents a question. He says, “How often do we think of our next conversation with this kind of alertness and high anticipation?” You just told us the story of Allie which reminded me of this quote about leaving a positive legacy and, Jackie, I’m going to put you on the spot and ask you to share with everybody actually the story about your son, Adam, recently and his date if you want to call it that to the prom because we could debate whether or not this has anything to do with Conversations Worth Having but what I would say is undeniable is that this story even though it’s a beautiful story about your son, I think it’s also a reflection of the environment that you have created with him through all the conversations you had. So, do you mind sharing that with us?

 

Jackie: Yes. I will share if I can two stories that go with it.

 

Jon: Yes, please.

 

Jackie: Those of you that are raising kids or grandkids, whoever you’re helping to raise and guide throughout life, my best return on investment and I’ve used this with hundreds of organizations is watching this in my kids. And so, I want to tell you this other story that when my son was 15 years old and we were going through our growing pains, I took off his bedroom door because he was always slamming it when he got mad and he came home from school and he was in ninth grade and he said, “Mom, where’s my door?” And I said, “I just wanted you to appreciate, Adam, what it’s like to have a bedroom door,” and he says, “You got to be kidding.” I said, “No. Let’s have a conversation about how you value that bedroom door.” And it kind of broke the ice of the tensions of a mother and a 15-year-old son doing driver’s ed and all these things. And so, I’ve always told my kid, “Citizenship is more important than grades,” and if you go and read the book, you will see that well-being does result in good grades.

 

So, it goes to the prom story, so we fast forward a couple of years and I said, “So, Adam, are you going to prom?” “No.” And I knew I wanted to have a conversation. So, I said I started with, “Well, how come?” He said, “I don’t want to go,” and I said, “I think every girl deserves to go to prom.” He said, “So, what does that mean?” I said, “Well, Emily’s been around all year. Don’t you think she wants to go to prom?” and he says, “No, Emily doesn’t want to go to prom.” I said, “How do you know that, Adam?” So, we’re having this really great conversation. He said, “Because she said she doesn’t.” I said, “Well, every girl says that until they’re asked.” I said, “Why don’t you ask her then you only have to go as friends and see what happens.” So, he came home one day and says, “Mom I’m going to prom.” I said, “Great. You asked Emily and she said yes.” He says, “Yeah,” and he says, “I have two dates, mom.” I’m thinking I just wanted him to have one date. How could Adam end up with two dates? And I didn’t know what he meant but he invited and he rarely invites my husband and I to things. He said, “I want you to come to the prom fashion show they have with the high school.”

 

So, Paul came home from work early, we get to the prom fashion show, and Adam and Emily come out and it’s the fashion show the kids have and it’s a fundraiser, so all kids can go to prom. And then at the end of fashion show comes out Adam with this young lady, Lydia, and she was a paraplegic. No, I’m sorry. She has little motion in her hands in a wheelchair and they are dancing around on stage. Adam, he had two dates for the prom and we didn’t plan it this way, but her parents were sitting behind us at the prom fashion show and I’ve just never seen an audience get so excited about a prom couple as they did about the two of them. So, it’s the senior year and after all these years you just start seeing your kids amaze you and so that was, “Way to go, Adam.” He had two dates for prom.

 

Jon: Oh, my gosh. Jackie, that’s such a great story and it makes me feel a little bit better about myself as a parent when you said earlier that they’ll mock me, but everything is still sinking in because my kids are eight, seven, and four and they do. They literally will mock my attempts to have a meaningful conversation and then something will happen later on where it’s like maybe it actually set in.

 

Jackie: Yeah, when they think you’re not listening.

 

[CLOSING]

 

Jon: I know. Everyone is all the time everything that we all say is having some influence on those around us. That’s a great reminder. Jackie, this has been awesome. So, everybody needs to go immediately and purchase between 5 and 15 copies of Conversations Worth Having. It will be well worth your time and energy. Is there anything else?

 

Jackie: You gave your favorite quote and I would just like to give a piece of advice and a personal quote. Your conversations can make all the difference and I was reading one of my favorite quotes from the book is one of the most exciting things about our life is the power of a single conversation to make a significant positive difference. So, if you just try to practice this once a day or once a week, that’s all you really need to start thinking about the nature of your conversations.

 

Jon: That’s awesome. Jackie Stavros, thank you. This was great.

 

Jackie: Thanks, Jon.

 

Jon: Cheers.

[END]